Publications Based on SOEP Data: SOEPlit

Risk Aversion and Sorting into Public Sector Employment

This research note uses two German datasets – the large-scale German Socioeconomic Panel and unique data from own student questionnaires – to analyse the relationship between risk aversion and the choice for public sector employment. Main results are (1) more risk-averse individuals sort into public sector employment, (2) the impact of career-specific and unemployment risk attitudes is larger than ...

Cyclical Absenteeism among Private Sector, Public Sector and Self-employed Workers

This research note analyzes differences in the number of absent working days and doctor visits and in their cyclicality between private sector, public sector and self-employed workers. For this purpose, I used large-scale German survey data for the years 1995 to 2007 to estimate random effects negative binomial (count data) models. The main findings are as follows. (i) Public sector workers have on ...

Life satisfaction and the consumption values of partners and friends: Empirical evidence from German panel survey data

This empirical research note uses a large-scale household panel survey for Germany to assess the consumption values of partners and friends. For this purpose, reported individual life satisfaction (as proxy for utility) is regressed on being in a partnership, on the number of friends, on the net household income, and on other covariates. The results of pooled and fixed effects regressions indicate ...

Individual Labor Market Effects of Local Public Expenditures on Sports

By merging administrative data on public finances of all municipalities in Germany with individual data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we explore whether local public expenditures on sports facilities influences individual labor market outcomes. Our identification strategy follows a selection-on-observables approach and exploits the panel structure of the data covering 12 years between 2001 ...

What is Unemployment in Europe? Concepts and Measurement in the ECHP

Happiness in Europe: Cross-Country Differences in the Determinants of Subjective Well-Being

The purpose in the present paper is to use individual panel data in the European Community Household Panel to analyse the impact on self-reported satisfaction from a number of economic and demographic variables. The paper contributes to the ongoing discussion of the relationship between life satisfaction and income. The panel property of the data makes it possible to study also the impact on satisfaction ...

Life Events and Subjective Well-being: The Case of Having Children

The literature on Happiness and Subjective Well-Being (SWB) has been dominated by studies of the impact from income and labour market status - and the impact on happiness from changes in these determinants. It seems obvious to expect an impact from noneconomic factors as well. In the present paper we focus on the eventual impact on SWB from having children. The dominant result in the rather few studies ...

The Benefits of Linking CGE and Microsimulation Models: Evidence from a Flat Tax Analysis

The Benefits and Problems of Linking Micro and Macro Models - Evidence from a Flat Tax Analysis

Mircrosimulation (MS) and Computable General Equilibrium models (CGE) have both been widely used in policy analysis. Their combination allows the utilisation of the advantages of both types. The aim of this paper is to describe the state-of-the-art in simulation analysis and to illustrate the benefits and problems of linking micro and macro models by analysing flat tax reform proposals for Germany. ...

The Development of Richness in Europe

In recent years, a branch of literature on the top of the (income) distribution emerged in Economics using top income shares as a measure of richness. This paper contributes to this literature by comparing different measures of richness (income shares, headcount, intensity measures). We analyse the development of various richness indices over time in Europe (and other OECDCountries) using micro data. ...